By Marsha Hinds
Marsha Hinds is a post-doctoral fellow in Gender Studies at the University of Guelph, the immediate past president of the National Organization of Women of Barbados and the co-founder of Operation Safe Space. Marsha is a practicing advocate for women and girls in Barbados. Her research interests include the Caribbean intellectual tradition, Caribbean women and girls’ equity and the systemic relics of racial slavery.
The lives of women and girls in the Commonwealth Caribbean have been historically affected by violence and it is a reality that remains with us today. When we talk about the experiences of violence many of us think of the experiences of women at the hands of their intimate partners. The violence that women experience is far more pervasive than that. Domestic violence includes the ways that women and girls are exposed to violence from male relations including fathers, brothers, sons and uncles. In just the last two weeks we have seen the case of a prominent Guyanese businessman come to light when a video was released showing his violent abuse of his daughter, while in Trinidad a fifteen-year-old girl lost her life at the hands of her father, whose occupation was listed as a corporal in the Trinidad armed forces.
The violence that women and girls experience is sanctioned by men in our societies who occupy positions of power and prominence. In this article, I focus specifically on how a Barbadian radio talk show host used his power in a recent conversation about issues of women and girls in a show on February 17, 2022. The way that he approached the topic of women’s bodies and their sexuality was problematic and offensive. Given what women and girls are facing at the hands of male relatives, these conversations in the public domain are problematic and uphold dangerous patterns.
The family unit is an important one in the overall anti-colonial project. Researchers such as Hilary Beckles, Lucille Mathurin Mair, Bernard Moitt, Prabhu Mohapatra and Patricia Mohammed offered crucial insights into how slavery and indentureship adjusted and affected the most private actions of the lives of Africans and Indians. I believe that strong familial units – which do not come in one form only, it needs to be emphasised – are important and critical to going on to address other issues within the wider Caribbean community. The matters to be discussed are serious and deep seated and I will always reject anyone who seeks to trivialize and simplify them in unhealthy ways. I was most surprised and disappointed to hear one such discussion play out on national radio in Barbados just a few months ago.
A caller called into Walter Blackman, moderator of the popular Call-in show, ‘Down to Brasstacks,’ which aired on Voice of Barbados 92.9 FM. The caller posed questions in relation to Barbadian men on the one hand and Barbadian women. Part of my consternation – and I imagine several others listening in as well – was that in an attempt to justify what can only be described as their contempt for and disrespect of Barbadian women, both the caller and the moderator responsible for guiding the discussion profiled other men and women from the Commonwealth Caribbean with broad and grossly over generalized observations.
In responding to the caller’s first question about the temperament of Barbadian men, the moderator asserted:
“So even when you are dealing with women from other islands….Women from other islands like Barbadians. Barbadians tend to be a lot more responsible; they tend to be family oriented. And the[y] tend to be oriented toward house ownership. Those are good qualities that I find in Barbadian men.”
Was the listener to move away from the conversation thinking that the only Caribbean men interested in home ownership are Barbadian men? What is the significance of a man who is geared towards home ownership in the context of a modern world where many women are University graduates and breadwinners? Isn’t gauging men by the financial offerings that they have a part of the lament that men generally make about women?
If a man is only depending on his ability to buy a house as his measure of what he has to offer to a partnership, then we are upholding traditional (not to mention deeply heterosexist) gender norms that make men the only ones capable of breadwinning and providing. This is historically inaccurate in the Caribbean – for example the historical record shows us how Black women have worked alongside men in the most gruelling roles on the plantation and then subsequently when they set up and led inter-generational households.
What about other qualities of partnership such as emotional intelligence and the ability to protect the sexual health of a partner by having responsible sexual relations free of infidelity? How capable have men in Barbados been at bringing their value to masculinity in line with a healthier and more contemporary pattern?
The moderator also made the startling assertion that: “A lot of women who get subjected to violent treatment dealing with other men, you don’t get that really from Bajans.”
This is indeed a reckless and misinformed statement. Several women are affected by violence in Barbados with Barbadian perpetrators as their abusers. Domestic and intimate partner violence are not actions of nationality. They are the result of unequal power relations among individuals in a relationship. The moderator in his next summation contradicted his assertion that Barbadian men do not perpetrate violence by informing listeners: “I am beginning to hear a lot of men who got deported from the United States and when you ask them what they do….Oh man, they went up there and hit a woman.”
The moderator and the caller attempted to end their discussion with what can only be described as a xenophobic discussion of Caribbean women, including Guyanese women. The moderator pontificated:
“Most men used to complain about Barbadian women more in the sexual arena. Say Barbadian women like to ‘ration yuh’.”
The Male caller retorted, “as opposed to the Guyanese….”
The Male moderator continued, “If she [Barbadian woman] smiles pon you on Monday night do not come back Tuesday. They have this saying ‘racking out yuh soul case.’ So now when the Guyanese came here, the Barbadian men generally were in for a treat. Fellows say they would leave home on mornings, she smile on them, they come home for lunch she smile on them again and then when they come home at night, she smile on them again and they can go to sleep with a smile on their face. And Bajan women complaining but they did not care.”
It is alarming that any moderator on call in radio would be allowed to carry on such a reckless conversation on national radio without push back. The moderator conveniently glossed the fact that many of the Guyanese women who are ‘supple and compliant’ in Barbados face all kinds of constraints on the island. Among them are women whose passports are withheld and who have tried to escape poverty in other Caribbean islands. When they come to Barbados they discover that the promises made to them are not real and they live their lives in subjugated positions.
As a Barbadian woman I also reject the effort of some men to create false divisions between Guyanese and Barbadian women. The point of takeaway here is that women who are made vulnerable by their immigration status do not ‘smile’ and ‘smile’ and ‘smile’ because they want to. They ‘smile’ because it is a resource that they trade for necessities – food, shelter and clothing. That one Barbadian male – a radio moderator with a national platform – would enable Barbadian men who are taking advantage of Guyanese women or any other woman for that matter to feel supported and enabled in that behaviour, is deplorable and unfortunate.
The moderator and his male caller appear angry that Barbadian women have historically had a bit more access to education and jobs such that they are in a slightly stronger socioeconomic situation than some of their Caribbean sisters. Such is the level of discussion in the brand-new Republic. I know that many of our Caribbean neighbours are happy that Barbados has shed the Queen. My consternation as a Barbadian is that we have not shed colonial mentalities and we continue to live within models and moulds that do not suit us or get us further as Caribbean people. It was important to me, after listening to this call-in show, to write this to let my Caribbean counterparts know that all Barbadians are not misogynist and xenophobic.
There are some of us with healthy inter-Caribbean partnerships and we do not recognize some of what passes as national radio on Barbados to be substantial or helpful. All we recognize is that some Barbadian men are lost in an old way of relating to women and we have lots of work to do to move our island – but not just Barbados, indeed the region, as the cases of daughters’ abuse at the hands of their fathers in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago clearly underline – past colonial relics.
